Thank you. It is really only the single forwards-looking radar I am asking about.
I have to admit that I'm surprised that there are any blocking patents in radar & signal processing. I'd have thought that all the accessible technology patents have long since timed-out, and if that is not the case then I fully understand that $300ea is a big bill and worth avoiding.
The traditional automotive radars viewed the world as a series of left-to-right slices and did not give height. I think this is one reason why we hear of "phantom braking" events associated with driving below bridges - the NN sees a sharp shade delineation on the road, and couples that with a blocking radar echo that originates from the bridge above, and quite understandably calculates that there is too great a probability of this being a stationary obstruction spanning the roadway. There are various lines of attack on that problem but the most obvious one suffers from needing to build (extract) a database of bridges/overpasses so as to ignore braking calcs when there - and that in turn suffers from a) poor scalability, and b) one day something will be there. Another line of attack is to improve the ability of the cameras to see into highly contrasted shadow and for the NN to then pick out drivable roadway below and a bridge above quickly enough to ignore the radar return and to not hit the brakes.
A third approach is to get height out of the radar. Clearly for automotive applications we cannot do mechanical scanning, so instead we have to go to AESA radars, which also have other advantages we can exploit (track whilst scan, multiple beams, etc). But even just using them in a simplistic single beam mode we can get height out of them. Which in turn ought to solve a lot of problems (phantom braking, and improved probability of overhead gantry recognition, higher definitions). And they seem to be becoming commercially available with radar on a chip solutions for automotive.
The “fourth dimension” improves radar accuracy in driver-assistance and self-driving systems. Several companies are pushing it forward with recent introductions.
www.electronicdesign.com
Multifunctional 4D imaging radar sensor technology can help OEMs and Tier 1s meet current and future safety requirements, says Ian Podkamien, Head of Automotive at Vayyar.
www.theengineer.co.uk
and these sorts of things were the origins of AESA
Active Electronically Scanned Array or AESA is a phased array system in which the beam of signals can be steered electronically in any direction, without physically movin
www.everythingrf.com
But if they can solve it with vision, then that's cheap and great !
climate.nasa.gov
